Sway
by dancing-badly
Summary: Laura explaining to Bill why she never had children. I was never truly comfortable as to why a woman like Laura would spend a significant amount of time with Adar without reason.


'Sway'

_Author's Note: This idea has been gnawing the inside of head for ages now, so I had to write. I never liked the assumption that Laura spent a good part of her life with Adar. It never sat well with me. So I wrote this. This is really my first fanfic I've ever completed, let alone posted._

"Laura," Bill stated quietly, unsure of whether to press forward with his query. Laura looked up at him from the comfortable position she held laying haphazardly across his chest in his rac. "mmm?" was her only response, having been satiated into silence from their previous activities. When he didn't respond she looked up quizzically, "Bill?"

"I wanted to ask about…" but he lost his nerve. The question had been plaguing him for years and had become even more of an irritant to him since they'd finally become lovers. He'd never asked before for a number of excuses: '_its none of your business'_,'_what does it matter anyways'_ but mostly he was afraid of the answer.

"Nevermind" he chickened out "its none of my business"

Laura looked at him. Bill averted his gaze and stared through the ceiling – trying to visualize the pipes and wires behind the bulkhead – trying to avoid her eyes.

She chuckled, "Bill. Look at me" He did.

"Look at us." He did, smiling at the image of their naked bodies intertwined beneath a sheet.

"Not just this. We've not kept secrets from each other for a very long time. I trust you and I love you. You can ask anything you want." She lightly kissed his chest to emphasize her point.

Bill marveled at this beautiful vixen that he somehow was lucky enough to capture. If anything made him believe in the gods, it was the fact that he found her during such tragedy.

"I love you too. And _you_ can ask anything _you_ want." He drew her face up and kissed her.

"So?" Laura said when the need for oxygen pulled them apart.

"Um…Adar. What happened there?"

Laura groaned inwardly when he said the name of her former lover. She new it would come up eventually, honestly surprised he (or anyone else) hadn't inquired earlier. She paused.

"We were lovers."

She stared intently at his face as she said it – he didn't seem to react much. She figured he had already presumed as much.

She felt ashamed. She always had whenever she thought of Adar. It wasn't something she was proud of doing in her life. Feeling the need to elaborate, "well…its kind of a long story"

"I'm not due in CIC for another 3 hours and you **are** the President so you can do what you want."

"True."

"Well, Richard and I were lovers." She repeated slowly. "But it's not as if I had aspired my whole life to be the mistress of the President."

"I shouldn't think so." Bill replied, urging her to continue by rubbing a hand up and down her back soothingly.

"I did it because I was angry and…I guess I wanted to punish myself…so Richard was the closest, most convenient way for me to do that. I'm not proud of it."

"Punish yourself?"

"I'd better go back to the beginning…. Did you ever wonder why I never had children?" She was sitting more upright now, settling in to tell a long, hurtful tale.

"Yes. I always found it odd how you loved children so much but never had any of your own."

"Its because I'm infertile" she replied simply. Unemotionally. Detached.

Bill felt immediately sorry for the woman he held so dearly in his arms and for the children she would have been a wonderful mother to. He didn't respond except to gather her hand that rested lightly on his chest within his own and lightly kiss her knuckles.

She shifted slightly and briefly glanced at him. "David and I tried of course. We didn't now."

"David?"

"My ex-husband. We'd been married for about 5 years when we decided to try for a baby. After a few months of no success we went to a fertility clinic on Caprica – and they told me I "had an inhospitable environment" to have a baby. Like I was some sort of greenhouse." Her voice shook slightly. She hadn't thought about that time in a while, preferring to force the painful moments to the back of her mind. Laura remembered the day clear as a bell. They had been sitting in Dr. Wang's office…..

_She sat, legs crossed, on a plush brown chair in the waiting room. David sat beside her looking as nervous as she felt. Reaching over she gave his arm a squeeze in reassurance. David smiled at her and grasped her hands. "It's going to be just fine. We're going to have a baby one way or another….its going to be fine" Laura wasn't sure he had said that for her benefit or his. She absently played with the fray on the armrest of the chair and looked around the little office. Her and David were the only two there aside from a single woman sitting near the door. She was sharply dressed and was reading an article in some Caprican health magazine. Laura, eager for a distraction, wondered why she was there. Was she as nervous as she was? Was she even there for infertility?…Laura got pulled out of her revery when the internal office door opened and a couple came through it along with the nurse. They had tears in their eyes and they were laughing. Clearly, they had good news. Laura smiled at the young couple – their faces reflecting their joy. She was happy for them and hoped that the Doctor would have similar news for them. The nurse called their names and her and David rose to follow the stout nurse. Laura noted briefly out of the corner of her eye that the nicely dressed woman was leaving with the happy couple – 'sister or girlfriend'. They were shown to the Doctor's private office instead of an examination room. Dr Wang came in shortly after and sat down behind her deep mahogany desk. "Laura, David. Lovely to see you." _

_They exchanged niceties for a few moments._

_Dr Wang cleared her throat, indicating that it was down to business. "Now, we've done all the tests and examinations and David, you are fine, Laura your womb is inhospitable…" The doctor continued talking about all the technicalities of it all, but Laura had already stopped listening. She couldn't have a baby. She just kept saying it over and over in her head. Was she sad? Yes, but in a way she had already known she couldn't. Perhaps that was why she loved teaching so much and dotting on her nieces and nephews._

"So naturally we started looking at alternatives. I didn't so much care if I couldn't have my own; I just wanted a baby…. I looked into adoption and surrogacy and foster care…all of it."

The pause in the conversation prompted Bill to give her a nudge.

"What happened?"

"David. That's what happened. He had it in his head that he wanted his own child. One of his own flesh and blood. Stupid really. He said he wouldn't love some strange kid as much." Shaking her head she continued.

"So I looked even more into surrogacy. But David just wouldn't budge. He wanted it to be our child. His and mine. My sister Kathryn even offered to be the surrogate mother. She offered to be artificially impregnated by David and carry our baby! She was 9 months pregnant with her 3rd at the time so we would have to wait a bit, but really, I didn't see anything wrong with this plan. It took me a while to convince David of this. Eventually he relented and we agreed to let Kathryn carry it."

Laura pulled the blanket more around herself, shivering in the cold air.

"Well everything just got frakked from there on in. After delivering her own child, a boy, named Zac by the way." She smiled at him

"Ironic." Bill smiled back

"Four months after that, Kathryn got diagnosed with breast cancer."

"Laura, I'm so sorry."

She smiled at Bill though her eyes got a little watery. "Doesn't matter now. But thanks anyway. The cancer progressed rapidly. Much as it did with me."

Bill squeezed her hand, remembering those awful months he watched her waste away.

"Kathryn was gone within a year. Who knew cylon blood was the cure eh." Laura stated, trying to inject some sort of lightness into one of the darkest memories in her life.

"During the last month or so of it, David served me with divorce papers. What kind of jackass asks for a divorce when her sister is dying!…I signed them. It wasn't a painful split. At least I don't think it was. I was too consumed with my sister and her family. Gods, her family. Her husband Simon and their three kids Veronica, Zac and Gillian. I spent all my time with them. Then she died. I remember wishing that I had been the one to get sick instead of her. She had a family. A house. A life. Me? I was expendable. She shouldn't have been taken away from her kids like that…..It was irrational I know, but I felt guilty. Guilty that I was the one who, in the middle of a divorce, was healthy and alive. Guilty that I could do nothing to save her."

"It wasn't your fault Laura." Bill wished he could make her believe that. But he knew of that guilt. He had guilt over Zac's death as well as Laura's almost death.

"Oh, logically I knew that. But I wanted to punish myself. Somehow during all this I had risen in the political arena to Secretary of Education. And yes, I got the job before I started sleeping with him. I did after all have a Ph.D. And there was Richard Adar: a morally corrupt bastard with a wife and a history of infidelity. I would never cheat on my partner. Its just not who I am or was. But I was angry with who I was so it seemed the most poignant way to hurt myself. So I started sleeping with him. It was a few years. Nothing great. Made me feel like shit, but also kind of alive at the same time I guess. Then the sword of irony swept in. I got diagnosed with breast cancer…I remember I was sitting on the boardwalk in Caprica City right after my appointment. The water was so clear and refreshing. I decided then and there to end the madness with Richard, to start living, and to stop blaming myself. I didn't want to spend the last year of my life living in an empty relationship created out of self-pity."

Bill smiled. There was the Laura he knew and loved. The one who was vibrant and decisive.

"Richard didn't take the news to well. As he saw it, _he_ was the one in control of the relationship and _he _was the one who said when it was over. As a punishment of sorts he sent me on the trip to Galactica." She smiled wrily at Bill before continuing. "He knew I hated the military. Hated violence of any kind. Hated the structure of it all. So naturally, it was the perfect way for him to show me up…then the world ended…and I met you."

She took a breath from her long tale and looked lovingly at the man who held her heart so dear.

"And here we are."

The End


End file.
